Does this team have enough starting pitching to contend again in 2019?

Share this:

TOKYO, JAPAN – MARCH 20: Pitcher Lou Trivino #62 of the Oakland Athletics talks with Catcher Josh Phegley #19 in the 9th inning during the game between Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics at Tokyo Dome on March 20, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Masterpress/Getty Images)

Yes, it was small-sample-size theater, with regular-season games being played amid the Spring Training schedule, 5,000 miles away from the West Coast. But those two losses counted the same as two losses in August. One percent of the A’s 162-game schedule is complete.

“Opening Day” starter Mike Fiers could barely get through the third inning in the season opener Wednesday, allowing five runs on 58 pitches. The A’s put seven runs on the board in that game, but still lost by two.

Thursday, newcomer Marco Estrada fared a bit better — he had an opposite line of three earned runs in five innings — but he only struck out one and the A’s found themselves in an early hole that they never fully escaped., losing 5-4 in extra innings.

Neither starting pitcher lost the game for the A’s — not technically, anyway — but they certainly didn’t put their team in a position to win, either. If that’s the standard, the A’s are in for a long season.

Because while Oakland played in tight margins seemingly all of last year, the margins in 2019 look even tighter.

(Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

There’s no cavalry behind Fiers and Estrada to save the day, either. The Japan series starters are the clear Nos. 1 and 2, with Brett Anderson (17 starts, 4.17 ERA in 2018), Frankie Montas (1.47 WHIP as a starter last season), and either Aaron Brooks (29 years old, 10 career starts) or Chris Bassitt (1.4 WHIP as a starter) poised to fill it out.

Top pitching prospect Jesus Luzardo, who was absolutely fantastic in Spring Training and looked poised to be with the big league team if not on Opening Day then soon thereafter, isn’t going to be able to fulfill that timeframe — he’s been put on the shelf with a shoulder injury that will keep him out at least a month.

Jharel Cotton and elite prospect AJ Puk, both coming off Tommy John surgery, aren’t near returns.

Sean Manaea, last year’s ace? He’s still questionable for the entire season, though there are reasons for optimism amid his rehabilitation from shoulder surgery.

And don’t tell me that the opener strategy is the solution to these woes. It’s a useful stopgap once or twice a week, but extrapolating it out to the whole season is a bold strategy that could well backfire. (Interesting flip side: no one has started 40 games in a season since 1987 — can designated opener Liam Hendricks do it in 2019?)

The A’s will go back into the exhibition schedule for this weekend’s Bay Bridge series, because baseball is weird. The thick Bay Area air should prove valuable to a rotation of flyball pitchers and three games against the offensively inept Giants could restore some confidence heading into the stateside start to the season.

But the concerns — amplified in Japan — will linger until the A’s starters quell them.

Are you confident that’ll happen? I’m not.

But who knows — maybe the A’s have another surprise in store for 2019.